The story
Set within the Grade I listed Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens, Restaurant Interlude is a Michelin-starred destination that forages its inspiration directly from the 240-acre estate. Since opening in October 2018, it has earned a Michelin Star (held since 2019) and four AA rosettes, recognition that reflects a kitchen deeply connected to the land. The menu changes with the seasons, shaped by what the estate’s vegetable garden, local farms, and the surrounding woodland provide.
Executive Chef Jean Delport, a Great British Menu Banquet Finalist, brings together his South African heritage, British training, and French technique. The result is a tasting menu that treats the estate’s bounty as a living pantry. Delport and his team—including Head Chef Sam Heaven, Pastry Chef Emily Heaven, and Wine Service Maestro Simba Chitsatso—craft dishes that bridge nature and cuisine. The approach is patient: ingredients are foraged, preserved, and woven into a multi-course experience that evolves with every harvest.
The set menu (available at lunch and dinner) reads like a map of the gardens. Dishes such as “onion · forest ashes,” “trenchmore beef · foraged salad,” and “smoked scallop · birch · summer truffle” show the kitchen’s precision. The dinner menu extends to include “snail fricassee · parsley · garlic,” “estate deer · skilpadjies · juniper,” and a “not so milk tart” dessert. Each course is a deliberate expression of the seasonal, foraged ingredients that define the restaurant’s identity.
The restaurant occupies Leonardslee House, a Grade II listed Italianate mansion that also houses ten boutique rooms, each designed by prominent British design houses. The estate itself is a living masterpiece: 240 acres of woodland gardens, seven lakes, and a restored landscape that serves as both backdrop and larder. Guests can explore the gardens before or after their meal, or stay overnight to fully immerse in the Sussex countryside. The bar, newly renovated, serves cocktails made with garden-inspired ingredients and an extensive international drinks list.
Interlude’s Michelin Star has been retained every year since 2019, and the AA rosettes have followed since 2020. The restaurant’s commitment to seasonal, estate-led cooking is not a marketing line—it is the daily reality of a kitchen that walks the gardens each morning. This is fine dining that feels grounded, precise, and genuinely of its place.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
High quality cooking
Dating from the 19th-century and surrounded by 240 acres of Sussex gardens and woodlands, Italianate Grade II-listed Leonardslee House is now home to a distinctive and elegant fine-dining restaurant with rooms. Here, Jean Delport and his team forage for ingredients, though the chef also looks to his South African culinary heritage, which lends a very distinctive flavour to his 16-course ‘Estate Experience’. Slices of biltong formed part of our array of canapés served in the bar, alongside breadsticks glazed with homemade ‘Marmite’ and topped with a refined version of slaphakskeentjies (a South African onion salad with a cooked egg and mustard dressing). A first course of lobster with cauliflower and kombu-washed Exmoor caviar, served with a glass of excellent Blanc de Blancs from Leonardslee’s own vineyard, was almost upstaged by the accompanying vertoek – an ethereally light, savoury doughnut finished with lardo and crispy pork skin. The mosbolletjies bread course was a highlight. Made with wine must from the vineyard, the traditional anise-flavoured brioche-like loaf was served in a mini cast iron casserole with home-churned butter ceremoniously melted tableside in a pan into which biltong spices, mushroom garum, red-wine onions and herbs from the estate were added. ‘Rabbit eats carrot’ showcased another estate ingredient in an impressively elaborate signature dish of many parts: a terrine of rabbit, duck liver, pork and rabbit jelly sandwiched between wafers of 'feuilles de brick' pastry, paired with carrot mayonnaise; buttermilk- and vodka-marinated deep-fried rabbit leg, presented in a smoke-filled cloche; pastry boats of confit rabbit and chilli jam, topped with rabbit mousse, cured egg yolk and marinated carrots. The dish was completed with crisp carrot 'leather' tartlets filled with rabbit offal and presented on a moss-topped log from the garden – a bravura exhibition of culinary technique and nose-to-tail cooking that was a delight to eat. There were a few hiccups during the three-and-a-half-hour marathon, but despite the extended duration, the pace of the meal never flagged and the service remained engaged and genuinely friendly throughout. Each course was accompanied by an information card, a clever way to avoid overly long dish descriptions at the table. Wines from Leonardslee and sister South African winery Benguela Cove offer particular value on a varied and interesting list where two-thirds of the bottles are priced at less than three figures – a pleasant surprise given the ambition of the restaurant.
4 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
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